KHUJAND, September 12, 2011, Asia-Plus — The World Health Organization (WHO) has offered to announce the Ferghana Valley a malaria-free area, Mumin Qurbonov, the director of the Sughd center for combating tropical infectious diseases.
“Over the last three years, only isolated cases of malaria have been detected in this area of Central Asia,” said Qurbonov, “Moreover, people contracted the disease outside the Ferghana Valley that is evidence of the imported character of this infection.”
According to him, in the Ferghana Valley, malaria has the imported character because there were no cases that person contracted the disease in the area. “In 2010, 111 cases of malaria were registered in Tajikistan and only one of them was reported in the northern Isfara district. A woman from Isfara has lived in Iran for several years and it turned out that her baby is down with malaria.”
This year, also only one case of malaria was registered in northern Tajikistan. Qurbonov noted that the most serious malaria situation in Tajikistan was reported in 2000, when 2,500 cases of malaria were registered in the country.
